Of Ernest Che Guevara, Sugyendra and others...

“कुछ तो मजबूरी होगी

यूँ आदमी बेवफा नहीं होता

रात का इंतजार कौन करे
दिन में क्या क्या नहीं होता।”

                These lines lifted straight from Aman Sethi’s marvellous book “A Free Man” says so much about what goes on in the world around us, provided we want to look at it. One of the many hazards of modern day living in the organised chaos of a metro such as Bangalore is that life here is led by many like me behind the fortified walls of gated communities, glittering malls and air-conditioned four wheelers with tinted windows. So when you suddenly land up at a place like Kolkata where you can see the poor, the not-so-well-off and the rich jostle in the same crowded and unclean space and in hot, humid and dusty environs, you end up hurriedly concluding that this place needs an overhaul. Abhik, who has been living in Kolkata for several years now, corrected me when he explained that this city is no different from any other. In Delhi, in the run-up to the now infamous Commonwealth Games, entire colonies where the poor had been living and working for years were razed to dust and the streets literally swept clean of beggars. But it is not that they do not exist any longer, it is just that they have been pushed into remote peripheries and dark hidden alleys of the city. In contrast in Kolkata, deliberately or indeliberately, they just let it be the way it is. Poverty is more in-your-face here because it is more visible here – visible from behind air-conditioned four wheelers with tinted windows and between and all around tall apartments and even taller malls. The poor have not been shoved into unknown ghettos and are instead very much a part of the daily lives of people like Abhik and me.

                A write-up in the Sunday newspaper on the working conditions of housemaids sparked off a discussion I had with Namita. She told me about Geeta’s (housemaid who worked at our place earlier) son whom she had to pull out of school at the age of twelve because they would not teach him much anyway at the government school and the teachers there would insist that he takes private tuitions from them instead, which she said she could not afford. So she found sense in pulling him out of school and “rehabilitate” him more productively at her brother-in-law’s shop. Namita also told me about Lakshmi’s (another housemaid) daughter who, when she suddenly fell ill one day, had to be admitted to a nursing home for the night and by the time she was discharged the morning after, cured because of intervention or otherwise, Lakshmi was poorer by six thousand rupees. She rued the fact that she had to spend this much money even though the government hospital provides free medical facilities but to which she decided not to go because of the appalling conditions there in.  Namita also remembered how her parents used to give away the food items, which they were eligible for because of the ration card held by them, to their house helps because the rice that they got under PDS had more stones than grains. And then she brought out the stark irony of reality when she told how Geeta and Lakshmi had to shell out eight hundred rupees for a LPG gas cylinder while we got it at half the price because of the subsidy the government gives on LPG cylinders for domestic use. This because they could not furnish the required proof of residence which would have allowed them to claim that the cylinder was meant for domestic use and hence eligible for subsidy.

                A day earlier, while sitting on a stone slab in a roadside breakfast shop, I was keenly observing the people around me. It was around nine in the morning and people were just starting off for work. A group of “dehadis” (daily wagers) lazily walked past the shop looking around without much intent or purpose and they were soon followed by a couple of youngsters sporting similar bright red coloured T-shirts bearing the slogan “The best coffee in town”, engrossed in an animated conversation between themselves and walking with a visible spring in their feet. The helper at the shop, meanwhile, lazily moved around to collect the steel plates for washing. He was wearing a faded yellow coloured T-shirt with the words “Stability and Unity” written across its back. I briefly wondered where he had got that T-shirt from. The shop itself was buzzing with people while the smell of freshly cooked dosas filled its air.  An elderly Muslim auto-rickshaw driver quietly having his dosa was the immediate object of my attention. He looked like a religious kind, because the neatest thing in his otherwise unkempt appearance was the taqiyah (the skull cap) which fitted perfectly on his head. He looked to be at peace with himself and seemed well prepared for a long day ahead.

The person sitting next to me on an adjacent stone slab was the best dressed person in that shop. He wore a formal blue shirt and black trousers and his clothes like his well polished black shoes looked old and cheap, and yet neat. He might be a sales person at one of the many nearby offices or shops on the Inner Ring Road, I thought. His neat appearance, topped by the sight of a small comb visible in the back pocket of his trousers, gave an impression that he took his work seriously. I was immediately reminded of Sugyendra, the peon at my workplace. Four months back, I saw him for the first time when he joined office as a peon - a twenty year old lean and short guy with fluent English and a very neat appearance. I remember noticing him on his first day at work because he was so neatly dressed – ironed trousers and full sleeve shirt tucked in, polished black shoes, hair neatly partitioned. The only thing unsure about him on that day was his anxious eyes – eyes searching for respect, comfort and companionship at a new workplace. That day I wished he stayed that way for all his days ahead at his new workplace. My eyes trailed him every morning to see any signs of change in his appearance or demeanour – how I wished he did his job as a peon well and everybody else recognised him for that, and yet how I feared that he would not get that of recognition or respect, no matter what he did. Sugyendra has since moved on to chowkidaar duties at night and I see him less often. His polished black shoes were replaced by sandals in about fifteen days’ time and slippers in another couple of months. His shirt is usually tucked out these days and the hair left un-intervened. But he is still soft spoken and I never find him missing from work.

In Ernesto Che Guevara’s phenomenal travelogue “The Motorcycle Diaries” he narrates an experience in a leper’s colony in a remote island off the coast of Peru or Chile. That colony was being run by a very committed doctor and a few nuns. He describes how several of the inhabitants were afflicted by blindness and various other deformities, which often goes unattended because it is assumed that it is a condition brought upon by leprosy. He goes on to describe how he and his friend Alberto spend time with these lepers watching football, listening to music played out by them, talking to them, laughing with them and eating with them from the same plate. By the time they both finally were ready to leave that place, the inhabitants were in tears and they bid them farewell by coming over in a canoe from the island to the place where Ernesto and Alberto were staying and sang songs and played music for them. Ernesto Guevara later remembers this evening and wonders how such a bond had been established over a span of only two days. To people who have to live with contempt and discrimination daily, Ernesto and Alberto’s simple gestures gave them a rare feeling of solidarity. I am instantly reminded of a small incident at my sister’s place at Icchapur couple of days after this Dusshera. The press-wala came to the house to give back clothes and take his money. Neetu Didi (Nitdi) counted the clothes, calculated the money due and paid him off but before he left, he was made to sit on the sofa in the drawing room and she insisted that he has the Dusshera sweets. The short frail elderly press-wala had his sweets and gulped down his glass of water before picking up a new set of clothes to be ironed and walking away. As he walked away, I had this feeling that he would return to his workplace and then his home a happier man.

Almost coincidentally, Namita narrated to me yesterday a similar incident that she had witnessed in a small utensil shop in Marathalli. Three males in their 20s from either U.P. or Bihar walked into that shop owned by a Kannadiga and started nervously making enquiries about the price of different kinds of plates. They appeared to be construction workers who had migrated to this far away city in the southern part of the country not very long ago. There was a certain hesitation in their demeanour which comes from finding oneself suddenly in a new place amongst new people speaking a new language. The shop owner was a cheerful man who tried to make them comfortable by speaking to them in Hindi and by engaging them in conversations about their impending purchase. After a lot of discussion in whispers between themselves, the three men finally settled for steel plates worth Rs. 110 each. And then one of them hesitantly asked the shopkeeper in a low voice if it was possible to carve out their names on each of the three plates. The shopkeeper gave a resounding yes and immediately asked them for their names. And when one of them said “Indrajeet” the shopkeeper remarked to this man jokingly that Indrajeet appears to be a very popular name since it is the fifteenth time during that day when he was having to carve out this name. When his three customers finally walked away from his shop, they might have become a bit less hesitant and a bit more comfortable.

I am tempted at this point of time to recall verbatim a few lines from the speech that Ernesto Che Guevara made in 1960 to medical students in post-revolution Cuba in 1960 and lifted straight from his book “The Motorcycle Diaries” -  

“We must then begin to erase our old concepts and come ever closer and ever more critically to the people. Not in the way we got closer before, because all of you will say: “No, I am a friend of the people. I enjoy taking with workers and peasants, and on Sundays I go to such and such place to see such and such thing.” Everybody has done that. But they have done it practising charity, and what we have to practise today is solidarity. We should not draw closer to the people to say: “Here we are. We come to give you the charity of our presence, to teach you with our science, to demonstrate your errors, your lack of refinement, your lack of elementary knowledge.” We should go with an investigative zeal and with a humble spirit, to learn from the great source of wisdom that is the people.”

At Tarapeeth which I visited on the Ashtami day this year while standing in a queue waiting for my turn to touch the revered mother’s feet, I looked around to find a sea of humanity – men, women, entire families – all waiting for their short tryst with the “ugra” goddess in stone, their tired souls upheld by their faith in the Almighty under the scorching sun. There were priests who charged hundred rupees for ensuring a shorter waiting time, there were gatekeepers at the many gates to the sanctum sanctorum who smilingly let the devotees in from time to time and stared at them expectantly on their way out and there were middle aged bare footed men chanting “Tara Mata Ki Jai” followed by their quieter womenfolk. And then suddenly a group of young men in their early 20s, dressed in faded jeans and bright T-shirts and sporting earrings, entered the long queue and started boisterously making their way ahead. Immediately I felt a sudden gush of energy in that place but not before long, it felt like “the energy of the youth spent away in the din of noise and norm.” Outside the sanctum sanctorum when the priest was making us all say some mantras aloud, I noticed the moist skin on his cheek quivering under the scorching afternoon sun. It felt like the only trace of life in that place filled with fossilised souls.

The day before yesterday, when I was riding back home on my motorcycle from the marketplace, I saw a young boy (5-6 years of age) sit pillion on his mother’s scooter with his back against her. He had a small cylindrical cardboard thing in his hands and he was looking all around himself through the hole of that cylinder, probably trying to see whether the world looked any different from that angle. I wished, at that moment, that he stopped looking at this world through a hole.

“The best form of saying is doing.” – Ernest Che Guevara.